Windows Server Is Undergoing ‘Deep Refactoring'

Microsoft's decision to wait until next year to release the next version of Windows Server and System Center came as a surprise last month largely because of the company's push toward faster release cycles. The upgrade to Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 came just a year later. Microsoft saying the successors to Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2 will come sometime in 2016 appears to debunk that push toward more rapid upgrades. However, a good many IT decision makers likely didn't shed any tears over the news, preferring the two- to three-year break between upgrades.

Besides the October release of the new Hyper-V Server Technical Preview (see Brien Posey's "First Look"), Microsoft had little to say about test builds of the rest of Windows Server and System Center, though a new Hyper-V preview will appear this year. Microsoft will outline its so-called "refactored" datacenter roadmap at next month's Build conference in San Francisco and May's Ignite confab in Chicago.

What we do know at this point is now that Microsoft has brought together the Windows Server and System Center teams, the group is more closely aligning the components of each to create a more software-defined, cloud-optimized platform. In a nutshell, that's how the team's leader and one of Microsoft's biggest rock stars, Jeffrey Snover, described it in a Redmond TechDays video talk shared via a Channel 9 video.

Snover, a Microsoft distinguished engineer and the lead architect for the Windows Server division best-known as the inventor of Windows PowerShell, promises Microsoft will deliver a new server platform that'll target the existing set of Windows Server APIs, as well as application cloud optimization (think containers and so on), deep remote management, automation and, yes, complete Windows PowerShell support. It'll be an interesting journey.

About the Author

Jeffrey Schwartz is editor of Redmond magazine and also covers cloud computing for Virtualization Review's Cloud Report. In addition, he writes the Channeling the Cloud column for Redmond Channel Partner. Follow him on Twitter @JeffreySchwartz.